The Patriots tried to establish the run against the Browns on Sunday, and the Browns, to their credit, shut it down.
Take out Jimmy Garoppolo’s two kneel-downs, and the Patriots rushed 33 times for just 101 yards, averaging 3.1 yards per carry. LeGarrette Blount had an especially tough time, rushing 18 times for only 37 yards (2.1 average). Twelve of his carries went for 2 yards or fewer.
But sometimes in the NFL, just having the threat of the run is enough to open up the rest of the offense. And that certainly was the case in the Patriots’ 33-13 victory over the Browns.
On Martellus Bennett’s first touchdown catch, Bennett initially stayed in to block on a play-action fake to Blount. Cornerback Joe Haden saw this, and abandoned his zone to help double-cover Chris Hogan in the back of the end zone. Except Bennett leaked out into the flat by design, and when Tom Brady’s initial reads weren’t there, he found Bennett standing all by himself for an easy catch and a walk-in TD.
Then there was the 43-yard pass to Hogan in the second quarter. The offensive linemen down-blocked to the left as if the play was an outside stretch run. Brady sold the play-action fake, center David Andrews swooped around as Brady’s backside protector, and Brady had enough time to find Hogan streaking across the field for the big gain.
And in the third quarter, the Patriots ran the same play, but reversed it. This time, the offensive line down-blocked to the right, guard Joe Thuney swooped around to protect Brady’s backside, and Brady found Bennett wide open up the right sideline for a 37-yard touchdown.
The NFL axiom still holds true — you throw the ball to build a lead, and run the ball to finish a win. But you still need balanced play-calling and the threat of the run to help open up the passing game.
Other observations after rewatching the game:
When the Patriots had the ball
■ The game plan in Brady’s first game back was pretty straightforward. When the Browns were in zone (which was the majority of the time), he exploited the holes and found Julian Edelman, Rob Gronkowski, and Bennett over the middle. When the Browns were in man, the Patriots ran play-action or quick screens to the flat. The Browns got wise to the horizontal passing game in the second half and jumped a few passes, knocking down a couple and almost intercepting one. But by that time the game was well out of hand.
■ The Browns’ cornerbacks stuck to one side all day — Joe Haden at defensive left cornerback (Brady’s right) and Jamar Taylor on the right side — making it easy for Brady to sniff out man or zone coverage. Brady was 12 of 16 for 206 yards and two touchdowns throwing to his right (mostly at Haden), 7 of 9 for 99 yards and a touchdown down the middle (against zone coverage and linebackers), and 9 of 15 for 101 yards to his left (Taylor).
■ Brady’s best throws were the deep passes — the 63-yarder to Hogan on a dime, the 43-yarder to Hogan from the right hash to the left sideline, and the 37-yarder to Gronkowski down the right seam. That video we saw on TMZ two weeks ago of Brady throwing a perfect long pass is interesting in hindsight. Perhaps Brady spent his time away working on the long ball, an area of his game that hasn’t been his forté.
■ Don’t blitz Brady, either. His 37-yarder to Gronkowski in the fourth quarter was against a five-man blitz. Gronk’s 34-yard catch-and-run on the first series was against a six-man blitz. And Bennett’s walk-in touchdown was also against a six-man blitz.
■ Josh McDaniels had a little fun on Sunday. Twice in the first quarter he used an unbalanced line, putting Gronkowski at the traditional left tackle position, Nate Solder next to center, and Joe Thuney at tight end in between right tackle Cameron Fleming and Bennett. The first time Blount rushed only for 4 yards, and the second time Brady called an alert at the line of scrimmage and hit Hogan on a quick pass for a first down. The beauty of the formation — Gronk was still an eligible receiver at left tackle, and Thuney was ineligible at tight end due to the alignment. And the referee once again was Bill Vinovich, who worked that Pats-Ravens playoff game a couple of years ago.
■ Gronkowski’s usage the last three weeks was ramped up from 14 snaps to 39 to 65 against the Browns, and we saw the Gronkowski Effect take hold. The Browns stuck two bodies on Gronkowski in the end zone, leaving Bennett in 1-on-1 coverage and an easy throw for Brady for a 5-yard touchdown. James White actually had no defenders on him and could have had another walk-in touchdown.
■ Speaking of White, we were as hard on him as any media outlet during the offseason and training camp, so it’s only right to point out he’s really blossoming into an excellent runner in his third season. He had 89 yards on nine touches (9.8 average) and showed excellent vision and cutback ability on his 36-yard screen pass. The Patriots had some great downfield blocking on that play by Thuney, Edelman (who took out two defenders with one block), and Hogan.
Edelman once again had an excellent day as a downfield blocker.
■ The offensive line protected Brady well, with fill-in right tackle Fleming performing admirably. But the line had a lot of trouble sustaining blocks in the run game. Someone — either Thuney, Solder, or James Develin — missed a blocking assignment on the stuffed fourth-and-goal run from the 1, because Demario Davis is not supposed to run into the backfield untouched like that.
■ Didn’t love the Patriots’ clock management at the end of the first half. Sitting on two timeouts, the Patriots still let the clock run all the way down to 21 seconds. Brady then threw incomplete on third down, leading to a 50-yard field goal attempt by Stephen Gostkowski (which he missed). The Patriots should have used one timeout earlier and given themselves more time to get a touchdown or a closer field goal attempt.
When the Browns had the ball
■ I imagine Bill Belichick chewed the you-know-what out of the defense last week after their horrid tackling effort against the Bills. They missed 17 tackles against Buffalo, but we literally counted none against the Browns. The front seven was dominant, with Alan Branch, Woodrow Hamilton, and Elandon Roberts each collecting two run stuffs, and Malcom Brown and Jabaal Sheard had one each. So did Devin McCourty, who made a great tackle-for-loss from the slot cornerback position.
■ And the Patriots did a nice job containing Terrelle Pryor when he was at quarterback. His three plays resulted in a 4-yard run for Isaiah Crowell, a Pryor run for zero yards, and an incomplete pass.
■ The Browns used their third-string center — John Greco, normally a guard — and the Patriots sent pressure up the middle all game with blitzes and stunts from the defensive ends. Dont’a Hightower forced an incompletion on the first third down of the game, and then crushed Cody Kessler in the first quarter for a safety. Greco never saw Hightower coming.
■ Sheard had a dominant game, collecting three QB pressures and a QB hit. Brown had two sacks up the middle, dominating Greco, while Roberts, the rookie sixth-round pick from Houston, played a season-high 31 snaps and was flying around the field, collecting a team-high seven tackles (one for loss) and a QB hit. Roberts was in a rotation with Hightower and Jamie Collins in the second half, with Hightower’s snaps likely limited due to his knee injury and the blowout.
■ It’s too bad the NFL cracked down last week and told us to stop posting GIF videos. I’d love to show you how Roberts smashed Pro Bowl left tackle Joe Thomas and drove him back into Crowell for no gain (right after the Browns took over on their 1-yard line). But the fun police said we can’t, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.
■ Rob Ninkovich played 24 of 63 snaps in his return from a suspension and a torn triceps, and didn’t make too big of an impact with just one tackle. Wearing a brace on his right arm to protect his triceps, the Patriots mostly used Ninkovich as an outside linebacker and had him drop back into space instead of using him 1-on-1 in the trenches.
He’s still probably a few weeks away from being 100 percent.
■ The Patriots’ cornerbacks also stuck to one side, with Malcolm Butler on the defensive left and Logan Ryan on the defensive right, instead of matching up with a particular receiver. This left the Patriots in zone coverage for most of the day, and it’s interesting to see how the Patriots are morphing into a Cover 2 defense, a scheme they haven’t played much in recent years. They have two great safeties in McCourty and Duron Harmon, and Patrick Chung has also been used as a deep Cover 2 safety at times.
■ Rookie Jonathan Jones got his first snaps of the season, playing 32 in place of a struggling Cyrus Jones. Jonathan Jones did give up the touchdown to Connor Hamlett in the fourth quarter when Hamlett went up and over him, but Jones held his own and finished with a pass defensed and a quarterback hit.
■ Cyrus Jones needs to take a deep breath and clear his head. He was removed as the kickoff returner after two bad decisions against Buffalo, got burned by Andrew Hawkins on the corner route for the touchdown (though Jones had no safety help), and then got ejected for connecting on a punch.
Special teams
■ CBS sideline analyst and former NFL kicker Jay Feely may have cracked the case on Stephen Gostkowski. After Gostkowski missed a 50-yarder wide right, Feely said Gostkowski is “not following through and letting the ball drift on him’’ to the right.
Sure enough, that extra point that Gostkowski missed in the AFC Championship game last season was wide right, as were the 48-yarder last week against the Bills, the 39-yarder against the Dolphins in Week 2, and the 30-yarder against the Panthers in the preseason. Of Gostkowski’s four misses this season, only the 52-yarder against the Panthers went left.
